Of all the islands of the Forth on which there are remains of ancient churches - the Bass Rock, the May Island, Fidra, Inchkeith and Inchcolm - the most interesting is Inchcolm, with its splendidly preserved ruins of an ancient abbey which stands on the site of the original Columban settlement. It may well be called "The lona of the East," for, not only are its religious traditions bound up with St Columba, who spread the gospel all over Scotland from the sacred isle of lona, but on Inchcolm to-day we can look upon the best preserved ruins of one of the most ancient monastic establishments in Scotland.
The most precious morsel of building on Inchcolm to-day is the very unique Celtic Cell which was occupied by a Columban hermit. This Cell stands at the extreme north-west corner of the abbey garden, and with it is bound up the whole story of the origin of the Abbey of Inchcolm. While Alexander I. was crossing the Forth some-time during the first quarter of the twelfth century - he reigned from 1106 to 1124 - he was caught in a violent storm and had to land for safety on the island of Inchcolm. He and his followers were maintained for three days by the hermit who was living in the little Columban Cell on the island. He fed the King and his friends on shellfish and the milk of his one cow. Alexander, in the year 1123, founded and endowed the Monastery of Inchcolm out of gratitude to God for his deliverance, and brought to the island some of the Augustinian canons who were living at the Monastery of Scone, which the King and his wife Sybila had founded about ten years before. Little wonder that the Hermit's Cell was preserved as a relic by the later monks, for these little cells or churches were erected in desolate spots and on islands all over the west of Scotland and elsewhere. The very oldest specimens of Columban cells are to be found on one of the Garvelloch Isles to the South of Oban - Eilean na Naoimh - the Isle of Saints - and it is to the period of these very ancient little cells and Columban churches that this Cell on Inchcolm belongs. Its exact date will never be ascertained. But, although it only measures about 16 feet long by 4 feet 10 inches at the entrance and 6 feet at the east end, its style of building, its little window at the east end, its tiny ambry and its pointed barrel roof all point to this Cell being one of the very few relics of the Columban church which remain to us in the east of Scotland. The wonder is that it still remains, for although it has doubtless been repaired many times, it has been used in later times both as a toolhouse and a pigsty.
The monastery itself as it stands to-day has been built at different dates. The Church is the oldest part, and originally consisted of a nave, a central tower and a small northern transept off it. The newer Choir to the east has long since disappeared, and only the foundations can be traced to-day. This choir was probably about one hundred feet long by about twenty feet in internal breadth. The Lady Chapel (a smaller church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin or "Our Lady," which very often was at the extreme end of the choir behind the altar) is here seen to open off the south side of the now demolished choir. It has been covered with a pointed barrel vault, and a portion of that still overhangs on the west side.
The Cloisters at Inchcolm are very interesting, because they are not merely a covered walk, but actually form the ground storey of the domestic apartments round three sides of the cloister garth. The usual cloister was merely a covered walk which ran round the inner walls of the courtyard or garth or garden, from which doors led off this cloister- covered walk to the various apartments. But, at Inchcolm, the ambulatory occupies the whole of the ground floor. This cool, dark walk, with its small, round-headed windows, its stone seats for the monks in the deep recesses and its round barrel roof, is very striking and primitive when a blazing sun sends slanting shafts of light across the gloom.
On the north side of the cloister garth ran the exposed wall of the nave and tower of the early church, which meant that the entrance to the church through the tower was exposed to the weather. So, at a later time, the monks erected a covered way of the more usual type along the north side of the cloister garth, and from the raglets in the walls at each end which carried the sloping roof of this covered way, as well as from the foundations for a thin parapet wall and. five buttresses that still remain, it is easy to picture this lean-to addition.
Above the ambulatory were the monks' apartments - on the east side the dormitory, on the south side the refectory, and on the west side the novices' quarters. Access to these was got by means of the small stair, which is lighted by very small windows that look out on the cloister garth. In the refectory can still be seen the remains of the pulpit from which one of the monks read while the brothers were eating. A few steps in the thickness of the wall led up to it.
But the most considerable building, which opens off the eastern ambulatory, is the Chapter House - the building that was always incorporated in a monastic establishment or cathedral, and in which the chapter or clergy met to transact business. At Inchcolm the Chapter House is octagonal, and, like the choir, it seems to have been added towards the end of the thirteenth century. It is well known that little or no monastic building was carried on in Scotland from that time till the fifteenth century. This date is confirmed in Inchcolm by the fact that Sir Alan Mortimer of Aberdour made large gifts of money and land to the Monastery of Inchcolm in 1216, and purchased a right of burial in the Abbey Church. But when he died the monks who were conveying his body in a lead coffin across the deep channel which runs between the Fife shore and the Sacred Isle, so mismanaged the barge that the body of Sir Alan Mortimer in its leaden case was plunged into the deep. Ever since, this channel has been known to seamen as Mortimer's Deep. So it was doubtless with Sir Alan's rich gifts that the later buildings at Inchcolm were erected in the thirteenth century.
The octagonal Chapter House has a groined vault. The ribs spring from round shafts, and where the ribs meet in a carved boss in the centre of the roof there is a circular hole opening into the floor of the chamber above. This hole may have been used for raising and lowering a lamp. Note the small windows, the fine doorway, the stone bench with a step running round the chamber for the monks to sit on, and the three arched recesses with seats at the east end. Here sat the abbot in the centre, with the prior on his right and the sub-prior on his left. The chamber above the chapter house is a rude and later erection, which was used as a warming room or study for the monks. It is said that the great Scots historian - Walter Bower - who continued "Fordun's Chronicles of Scotland," may have added this study for his own use. He was the eleventh abbot and the greatest of them all, being born at Haddington in 1385. His reign as Abbot of Inchcolm began in 1418, and we can at least imagine the learned abbot sitting comfortably up there in his warm study working diligently at his history with the wild winter storms howling about him and his island monastery.
The large range of buildings across the entrance court from the Chapter House and the Lady Chapel were domestic offices. Here were the cellars, lighted by loop-holes, and above them five or six offices, two with large fireplaces and one with an oven in the angle.
The buildings on the north side of the tower and close to the sea may have been a guest house or a lazar house.
The garden must have been a perfect pocket of sunshine between the monastery walls and the natural rocky height of the island on the west, and when the present restoration has been carried through by His Majesty's Office of Works, this garden will doubtless be laid out again with all the charm of its ancient cloistered peace. Over the garden wall to the south there is still preserved the monastic well - forty feet deep and built most beautifully of stone. It is the only water supply on the island, and the water is cold and pleasant, although a trifle hard.
Beyond the garden on the grassy hilltop to the west lies the one and only ancient gravestone that is visible - a fine specimen of a hog-backed stone which was used for a grave covering. Sitting down here, it is a moving thought to those who have any historic imagination that this is the site of the very ancient Danish graveyard of Inchcolm to which Shakespeare made reference in Macbeth, Act I., Scene 2, in connection with the defeat of Sweno, the King of Norway :-
"Sweno, the Norway's King, craves composition;
Nor would we deign him burial of his men
Till he disbursed at St Colm's Inch
Ten thousand dollars to our general use."
Here many human bones have been found, and the historians, Holinshed and Bellenden, mention, "Manie greit stanes graven with the armes of the Danes." We must remember that the Scandinavian Vikings harried and ruled our western seaboard and the isles from the end of the eighth century to the middle of the thirteenth century. Haco, the last of these rover kings, was defeated at the Battle of Largs in 1263. It will not be wonderful, therefore, if this ancient burial mound on Inchcolm yields some interesting finds to the careful restorers.
Inchcolm, like lona, was robbed, harried and burned many times. In 1335 it was harried by the English, who stole many of the precious things belonging to the monastery - chalices, censers, crosses, chandeliers, relics, vestments and images. It was attacked again in 1336. It was plundered and set fire by the fleet of Richard II. in 1384. In 1543 the abbey seems to have been deserted on the eve of the Reformation. But after the Battle of Pinkie in 1547 it was occupied as a centre for his fleet by that ruthless English destroyer of many of our finest Border abbeys - Hertford, Duke of Somerset. In our own day, Inchcolm was bristling with guns during the Great War, and here the Admiral of the North Sea Fleet had one of his most vital headquarters.
It is very apparent to visitors that for long the Abbey of Inchcolm has been occupied as a private residence. Indeed, one of the first tasks of the restorers was to remove the vandal wails, partitions and plaster ceilings which have for generations hidden the beauties of the original building, soon, we hope, to be made visible. For centuries the abbey has been the property of the Earls of Moray, and this is the story of how it came into the hands of that great Scots family.
James Stuart of Beith was a favourite of James V. and also of Pope Paul III. So he used his influence to get his son appointed as one of the canons of Inchcolm. The son ultimately became commendator of the abbey, and on the dissolution of the monasteries was granted a feu-charter of the lands of St Colme, and after that a peerage in 1581 under the title of Lord Doune. On his death in 1590, the island passed to his son and heir apparent, who married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the Good Regent Murray, and succeeded to the title and honours of his father-in-law. He thus became the second Earl of Moray - the "Bonny Earl of Moray" of the ballad. Cast your eye over yonder to the Earl's lordly house of Donibristle on the Fife shore, and you can visualise the whole circumstances of the ballad. For the handsome earl was greatly loved by Anne of Denmark, King James' queen. James resented this, and ordered the Earl of Huntly to seize Moray. The King's friends came on Moray one night in his own house at Donibristle, set fire to the house and ran out after the escaping Moray. The flaming plumes on his helmet, however, betrayed him down on the seashore. There - Huntly, Gordon of Buckie and others followed him. A struggle followed, in which Gordon of Buckie wounded the Bonny Earl. When he felt himself dying, the Earl exclaimed: "Ye hae spoiled a better face than your ane." Then Buckie, pointing a dagger at Huntly's breast, exclaimed with an oath, "You shall be as deep in this as I." So Huntly was forced to pierce the defenceless body.
"He was a braw gallant
And he played at the gluve;
And the bonny Earl o' Moray
He was the Queen's luve.
"O lang will his ladye
Look free the castle Doune,
Ere she see the Earl o' Moray
Come soondin' thro' the toon."
The old ballad expressed the popular feeling of indignation at the slaying of the Bonny Earl.
What a centre of ecclesiastical history is this Island of Inchcolm! Alexander I., who founded the abbey, was himself the son of that saintly Woman, Queen Margaret, who, by her remarkable influence, won over the Celtic church in Scotland to the Roman ritual. She is commemorated in Edinburgh by St Margaret's Chapel on the Castle Rock - the oldest building in the city - and by Dunfermline Abbey, where she had her shrine. King Edgar I., one of her sons, has yonder, now the base for our fleet of his name enshrined in Port Edgar over destroyers. Alexander I., still another, not only founded this Abbey of Inchcolm, but he gave lands to the churches at Durham and Dunfermline and founded the monastery at Scone. King David I., a third Royal son, will always be remembered as the "sair sanct for the croon," who crippled the exchequer by building no less than nine abbeys, whose very ruins are the glory of our land - Kelso, Dryburgh. Melrose, Newbattle, Dundrennan, Kinloss, Cambuskenneth, Holyrood and Jedburgh.
The very name of Queensferry reminds us of the mother of these three kings - for Margaret, who first landed at St Margaret's Hope, founded hostels on the north side of the Forth and on the south side of the Forth, and instituted a free ferry for all pilgrims who wished to travel to the shrine of St Andrew in Fife. At Abercorn over yonder, which was once the northern limits of Northumbria, Bishop Trumwin, who was appointed as Bishop of the Picts, had his see in the seventh century. At Culross, further up the shores of Fife, lived St Serf, who succoured the Princess Thenu when she landed from a coracle in which her father Loth, King of Lothian, had set her adrift because she had married a shepherd. The child she bore at Culross became the great. Kentigern or St Mungo, the "Lovable Man," who founded Glasgow Cathedral and is the patron saint of that great city. The Firth of Forth is full of islands on which there were ancient churches - Inchkeith, the May, Fidra, and the Bass. But greatest and best of all these early shrines remaining to us to-day is this wonderful Island of St Colm or Columba, with its authentic Cell and its hoary monastic buildings - the real lona of the East.